I Spy
by LoLoGreeneVines
Summary: Mayuri Kurotsuchi is bored, and decides to stave off his boredom by remotely screwing with his favourite unwitting test-subject.
1. Chapter 1

"Dull. Dull. Dull. Dull. Why is nothing interesting?"

Mayuri Kurotsuchi was in a bad mood. After all, there were only so many times you can perform cat-organ transplants on your subordinates before they go to the Captain-Commander to complain of your _infringing Soul Rights_ and the experiment ends up shut down. It just so happened that this scenario was _precisely_ what had just happened, and for once Mayuri was at a complete loss as to what to do next.

"Nemu!" he shouted, swivelling his chair to face the door through which his Lieutenant emerged.

"Yes, Master Mayuri," she said in a monotone, quickly dashing over to her Captain. "What do you need?"

Mayuri waved his arm lazily. "Entertain me," he postulated, sitting back in his chair and observing his daughter eagerly.

Nemu nodded. "Would you like me to do the Drill Dance?" she asked, clicking her elbow and tilting her head horizontally.

"As entertaining and informative as it was to watch how fast Akon could run away the last time, I have already seen the Drill Dance," Mayuri pointed out, yawning.

"We could experiment on Rin Tsubokura?" Nemu suggested helpfully. "He's in the laboratory right now and his lungs are still pristine..."

"That experiment has been officially shut down by Captain-Commander Yamamoto," Mayuri uttered in disappointment. "Something to do with '_you can't give your subordinates feline brains, it's against their Soul Rights'_ or some such nonsense. Personally," he added, a smirk creeping onto his face, "I think I did them a favour. They became far more intelligent once I disposed of their original brains."

"I quite agree, Sir," Nemu said placidly, still standing to attention.

Mayuri glared at Nemu. "You're so _boring_!" he yelled, suddenly seizing her plait and bashing her head against his desk. "Don't you have _any_ good ideas?"

"I'm so sorry, Master Mayuri," Nemu said quietly, as soon as her father had allowed her to stand back up. "Why don't you get up the data from the bacteria you planted on Uryu Ishida and see if he's doing anything interesting?"

Nemu winced slightly as she saw Mayuri's arm reach out towards her scalp again, before being surprised as he patted her genially on the head. "That's a good idea!" he announced, turning on his big monitor and bringing up the relevant information. A long string of numbers appeared on the screen.

"What do these numbers mean, Sir?" Nemu inquired, earning herself a reproachful glare from Mayuri.

"Did I create you to be stupid?" he asked wearily, dragging up another programme. "Fine, I can use an interpretation programme to tell us what the Quincy is seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and tasting, in addition to providing insight into his senses of nociception, equilibrioception, proprioception, and the like."

Mayuri finished talking and brought up a rough image of Uryu's vision on the screen. "Pah, a girl, how boring."

Nemu peered closely at the screen, upon which a slim girl with long, reddish-brown hair had appeared. "Master Mayuri, that girl is the one who was accompanying Ishida before your altercation in the Soul Society."

Mayuri's eyes widened in interest. "So she is," he noted, as Uryu's gaze shifted and the Kurotsuchis were treated to a view of his feet. "Oh, look, Nemu, it would appear as though the boy's pulse is speeding up slightly."

"Your bacteria can tell us that?" Nemu asked in quiet wonder, as Mayuri rolled his eyes.

"Of course they can," he spat, bringing up an assortment of sliders on the screen. "I made my bacteria to be as good as my current technology allows them to be. They spread out over the boy's body and latch on, synchronise until each one is aware of where it is in relation to each of the others, and then they gather as much data as they can from their kinetic energy and send it back to us. Absolute marvels," he said, glancing at Nemu. "I think of them like the children I never had."

"What does that make me?" Nemu asked calmly.

"Just think of them as your younger siblings," Mayuri shrugged. "Ooh, look, the boy appears to be in a classroom."

"Is it possible to turn the volume on? I think the girl is speaking," Nemu suggested.

"Stupid question," Mayuri chided, before turning to one of the sliders on the screen and dragging it to the right. The brunette girl's soft voice filled the room.

"Thank you for letting me borrow your tape-measure, Uryu!" she said enthusiastically, as the Quincy's gaze was once again directed straight down at the desk.

"It was no trouble, Orihime," the boy said, the bacteria flagging up the too-subtle-to-hear fluctuations in his voice's timbre.

Mayuri excitedly pointed out another read-out on the screen, indicating that the temperature of the boy's face had suddenly shot up, and the screen was suddenly, briefly dominated by the sight of a slim hand as the boy pushed his glasses further up his nose.

"I have an idea!" Mayuri announced over the sound of the girl's wittering in response to Ishida. "I programmed the bacteria to act on my behalf with the correct stimulus!"

"What exactly do you mean, Sir?" Nemu asked, as Mayuri rolled up his sleeves.

"Proprioception!" he declared. Waiting until the boy once again raised a hand, Mayuri suddenly flipped a switch and Uryu's fingers missed his glasses by about an inch, shooting up his nostrils instead.

Mayuri collapsed into laughter as Nemu watched all of the numbers on the screen increase, and they heard the sound of Orihime giggling.

"Oh, Uryu, you're so clumsy!" she said cheerfully, clapping a hand on his shoulder. Uryu's pulse increased even further and he stared at a square of fabric on his desk.

"Yes, silly of me," Uryu responded, quietly. "I'm just going to return to my sewing now."

"You do that, boy," Mayuri said, his fingers hovering over another set of switches.

Mayuri waited until the bacteria indicated the presence of a needle in Uryu's fingers, before flipping the same switch and watching as the boy's pain metre spiked before quickly switching to a different dial and turning it up all the way. The spike on Uryu's pain metre suddenly shot off the scale. "Nociception next!"

Uryu screamed in pain and the view on the screen was ungainly thrown upwards, towards Orihime, who was standing next to the Quincy looking worried. "Are you okay, Uryu?" she asked, her eyes wide with fear. Mayuri turned the dial back down and the screen became steady.

"I just stabbed myself in the finger," Uryu said, uncertainly. "It doesn't hurt anymore."

Orihime frowned. "In that case, it probably didn't ought to have hurt that much in the first place. Would you like me to heal you?"

Mayuri watched as the bacteria on Uryu's face indicated his temperature rising even further. "No! No, I'm completely fine, Orihime," Uryu said, standing up. "Don't worry about me."

"Ugh, this is getting boring, too," Mayuri exclaimed, slapping his hand down on the desk and hitting a large button by mistake. "Whoops, that was equilibrioception," he said, as the view on the monitor began to waver until a large crash, the sight of broken glasses on the floor blown up on the screen and the compressed bacteria on Uryu's nose indicated that he had faceplanted on the floor.

Mayuri heard the sound of Orihime gasping and saw her gently tilting Uryu's head upwards, before she grabbed his hand and dragged him upright, clamping him to her side. The view on the monitor was still all over the place. "Let's get you to the nurse, Uryu!" she declared.

"Oh, look," Nemu said, dully, pointing out the boy's ever-increasing pulse hitting triple figures.

"Well, it looks as though he's about to have a heart attack," Mayuri said indifferently, turning off his computer at the plug. "Well, he's of no use to me dead. Let's go and kidnap somebody from the Fourth Division; Yamamoto never said anything about experimenting on anybody _else's_ subordinates."

* * *

**Author's notes: This idea just came to me when I was going back through the Hueco Mundo arc and reached Mayuri's fight with Szayelaporro Granz. For the record, I actually can't stand Mayuri, I can't forgive him for what he did to Uryu's grandfather (and then rubbing it in Uryu's face), but I will admit that he is very fun to write. :)**


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's notes: I have decided that this "one-shot" should instead be a short series of (long) drabbles, on the grounds that I like the concept of Uryu's life through the eyes of the Kurotsuchis who really have no business watching it in the first place. Well, that and I just find torturing Uryu to be too fun to pass up. As such, this fic will remain marked as "complete" but I will add to it as and when I think up new ways for Mayuri to troll the poor boy. :D**

* * *

Mayuri spent most of the next week looking for loopholes and attempting to persuade Captain Commander Yamamoto to overturn his ruling on the cat-transplant experiments, but aside from a small distraction n the form of a minor Hollow attack halfway through the week, the Twelfth Division spent much of their time doing... well, not a lot, really.

"We could always do a meta-analysis of your data from the Quincy Trials, Sir," Nemu suggested to her irate Captain in an attempt to prevent him from unleashing Ashisogi Jizu on Rin Tsubokura for entertainment again.

"That's a terrible idea, you troublesome wench!" Mayuri shouted in retaliation, wielding his unsheathed Zanpakuto at his daughter.

"I'm sorry you feel that way," Nemu responded placidly. "May I ask why?"

"I just don't feel like it," Mayuri sulked.

However, at that moment an important-looking light blinked on on Mayuri's desk and the mad scientist whirled around in his seat, the better to look at it.

"Oooh, the Quincy boy isn't dead after all!" Mayuri exclaimed, all traces of his bad mood disappearing as an expression of acute fascination spread across his face. "The girl must have reversed whatever damage I did to him. I wonder what the bacteria are flagging up this time..." Mayuri trailed off as he frantically hit buttons, bringing up the screen showing Uryu's vision. "Oh, he's just walking," he said, disappointedly, as he was shown an image of a street through a curtain of black hair.

"You could make him jump if you turned up the nociception?" Nemu suggested.

"Dull. He may be a mere human but he's a _smart_ human, if he suddenly began feeling pain for no reason he might suspect me and then my fun would be over."

"That's right, he almost killed you the last time," Nemu said, pensively. "I'm really glad he didn't..."

"That hole was nothing. I could have lived without my internal organs for longer, I just thought it would be better strategically to regroup," Mayuri pouted.

"Hey, Uryu," a soft voice said, coming through the speakers. Mayuri's ears pricked up. Well, they would have done if they weren't covered by his mask.

"It's the girl!" Mayuri declared, as the view on the screen shifted to reveal Orihime Inoue walking along by Uryu's right-hand side.

"Thank you for offering to walk me home, but I'm really fine from here," Orihime said, smiling, and the Kurotsuchis observed the boy's pulse increase slightly.

"You're very welcome, Orihime," said Uryu, and the sensors told Mayuri that he was frowning slightly. "It's really no trouble, though, I'm happy to walk you home. Particularly after hearing your stories about the car accidents..."

Mayuri's eyes gleamed at the notion of a vehicle-repelling specimen, but Orihime spoke up quickly. "Oh, it's not a big deal, it happens all the time but I'm fine!"

"You could learn a thing or two from this girl, Nemu," Mayuri scolded his daughter.

"Yes, Master Mayuri," Nemu said quietly, staring attentively at the screen.

"If you were to one day be injured by a car and I could have possibly prevented it, Orihime, I would never forgive myself," Uryu's voice said through the speakers. "Please just humour me. I would far sooner walk you to and from school every day than visit you in hospital."

"Nice boy," Nemu said vaguely to herself.

Mayuri's eyes popped. "Oh, you think so? Then why don't you _marry_ him?" he spat, glaring at Nemu. "Actually," he said, stroking his chin with a finger, "could you? It could be useful to have such an interesting specimen around..."

Nemu opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, the screen stopped moving as Uryu peered up at a small block of flats.

"We're here," Uryu said, and the Kurotsuchis watched as he pushed his glasses up his nose.

"Yep. Thank you, Uryu," Orihime responded as she came into view. "Have a good evening!"

Mayuri's eyes widened as he realised he was about to lose the opportunity to have any fun. Quickly, while Uryu's hand waved at the side of the screen and just as he was about to turn away, Mayuri smashed a button on the desk.

A faint gurgling noise came through the speakers.

"I suppose that's excreception," Mayuri pondered.

"Is that even a real word, Sir?" Nemu asked passively.

"It is now..." Mayuri responded, watching the screen as his bacteria flagged up Uryu's slightly increasing pulse.

"Orihime, I don't mean to intrude," Uryu's voice said, the bacteria pointing out a slight hurriedness to his voice. "But would you mind terribly if I just quickly came in and used your bathroom?"

Orihime blinked. "Of course. Come with me."

Mayuri's bacteria registered as Orihime grabbed Uryu's wrist and pulled him up the stairs to her flat, the temperature of his face steadily increasing. Orihime pulled out a key from her pocket an unlocked the door, leading the hopping Quincy into the room.

"Of course, he doesn't really need the toilet," Mayuri explained to Nemu, who was standing to attention as usual. "He just _thinks_ he does."

"But of course," Nemu responded quietly, staring at the screen.

Orihime's image pointed towards a door. "It's right there. I'll just be in the kitchen."

"Thank you, Orihime," Uryu's voice said through the speakers, gratefully. Orihime gave the screen a smile before Uryu looked towards the indicated door and practically ran in, closing it behind him.

Mayuri flipped the switch back and watched as the previously jumping screen became motionless.

"What?" Uryu's muttered voice said through the speakers, and Mayuri giggled like a child. The bacteria indicated that the boy was furrowing his brow, and the screen shifted as Uryu examined the room. The Kurotsuchis were treated to a close-up of Uryu's face in the mirror, revealing a rather confused expression on his bespectacled visage.

Uryu spent about a minute frowning into the mirror and polishing his glasses, before tidying the hair either side of his face and walking over to the toilet and flushing it. For good measure, he washed his hands in the sink, drying them on a pink and white hand-towel next to the door, before leaving the room.

"Are you going to do it again, Master Mayuri?" Nemu enquired, watching placidly as the boy searched out Orihime in the kitchen.

"No, no," Mayuri responded tersely. "That would be cruel of me."

"Of course," Nemu said quietly.

Orihime suddenly came into sight on the screen, leaning over a saucepan.

"Thank you, Orihime," Uryu said, his confusion barely evident in his voice. "I feel much better now."

Orihime turned around, smiling broadly. "I'm glad to hear it!"

"I must be off," Uryu said, pushing his glasses up his nose, presumably to hide how warm the bacteria were reporting his face to be.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay for a bit?" Orihime asked, tilting her head sideways slightly. Uryu's pulse increased slightly.

"Ah, I'm sure, thank you," Uryu's voice came quickly through the speakers. "I don't want to be a bother, and I need to begin on my homework, anyway."

Orihime's smile got slightly smaller, somehow. "Oh, okay. I guess I'll see you tomorrow, then!" she said, brightly.

"Good evening, Orihime," Uryu's voice said, and he turned to leave the room.

"Quickly, Nemu!" Mayuri exclaimed. "How should I stop him from leaving?"

Nemu didn't respond, instead reaching for a switched. She pressed it, and once again a small gurgling sound halted Uryu in his tracks. This time, however, the boy turned towards Orihime, who was wearing a big smile.

"Would you like some food?" she asked, cheerfully, waving her wooden spoon. Uryu followed the motion of the cooking implement before lowering his gaze to the floor, the bacteria indicating a slight nod.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude," Uryu said. "It's strange, I definitely wasn't at all hungry when I left school..."

Orihime giggled. "Well, maybe emptying your tummy just now made you hungry!" she announced. Uryu cringed.

"But... I didn't... oh, never mind," he said, quietly, as Orihime turned back to her saucepan, smiling cheerfully.

"Oh, it'll be nice to eat with you anyway," Orihime said happily. "I usually eat alone since my brother died." Uryu listened attentively as the girl went off on a large tangent about her brother's cooking, but Mayuri was too busy glaring at Nemu to listen.

"Nemu, how many times have I told you not to touch my equipment without my permission?" he demanded, raising a hand as if to strike Nemu.

"I'm so sorry, Sir," she said sadly, lowering her head in submission and preparing for the hit.

However, Mayuri lowered his hand. "On second thoughts, this could be an interesting development. Good work, Nemu," he conceded, watching the screen as Orihime served up an assortment of ingredients on two plates and set them on the table.

Uryu sat down politely at the table and gazed at his plate, upon which Mayuri could see a bizarre mixture of what looked like new potatoes and sweetcorn boiled in vanilla ice-cream.

Orihime sat down next to her guest. "Dig in!" she declared contentedly, raising a spoonful of the bizarre concoction up to her mouth. Uryu winced.

Mayuri tracked the progress of Uryu's own spoon as he raised it to his face, dripping warm ice-cream in his bowl as it ran off the spoon. The scientist watched closely as the bacteria told him that Uryu's mouth closed around the spoon, and suddenly the bacteria lit up on the screen.

"Oh, looks like he likes it," Mayuri muttered to himself as the bacteria connected to Uryu's taste receptors went wild.

"Orihime, this is actually really good," Uryu's voice said as the screen turned away from his bowl and towards the smiling brunette next to him.

"Thank you! I'm really glad you like it," Orihime said cheerfully in between bites. "You know, not many people are brave enough to try my food..."

However, before she could finish speaking, Mayuri had shut down the windows displaying the data. "Bored now," he announced to nobody in particular.

"But Sir, the boy isn't really hungry, we just made him think that he is..." Nemu said quietly, only to find her father's hand around her throat.

"Eh, it's not my problem if the boy puts on a couple of pounds. He's skinny enough as it is," Mayuri shrugged, tossing Nemu aside. "I just decided that I'd probably have more fun eating ice-cream now."

"But of course, Sir," Nemu responded, watching as her Captain dashed from the room in search of ice-cream before she quickly brought the programme back up again, turned the hunger switch back to 'off' and closed down the programme again.

* * *

**More author's notes: I have a dilemma. I could either keep the fic's style as it is, leaving it as something which could potentially be happening unseen in the background of the canon (kind of post-Soul Society but pre-Hueco Mundo, I suppose), but restricting what I could do with it in future chapters, or I could make it AU, eventually give Uryu and Orihime a Relationship Upgrade (at the moment it's somewhere between friendship and Starboard Tease, depending on the prescription of your Shipping Goggles) and give Mayuri even more great ways to embarrass the poor kid. Basically, the way I see it, option two means more chapters, but diverging from canon. ****I'm undecided, so what do you, as the readers, think? ****:D**


	3. Chapter 3

Mayuri noticed the familiar flashing LED on his desk out of the corner of his eye.

"Nemu, we have activity!" Mayuri declared, spinning around in his chair and frantically pressing buttons.

"Yes, Sir," the girl said, rubbing her tired eyes and standing to attention. At that moment, Mayuri's screen flickered on, revealing a bow made of light held aloft in the Quincy's right hand. Behind the light, Mayuri could see a giant Hollow standing in the middle of a park and rearing its tusks, screaming over the boy's head. Uryu drew a bow, but before he could send the arrow of light flying into the skull of the Hollow it had vanished, reappearing behind him immediately.

"I'm so glad I didn't go to sleep yesterday evening," Mayuri said, rubbing his hands together. "Such an invaluable opportunity to watch a Quincy fighting in his own environment."

"But Sir," Nemu said quietly, "you've already seen..."

"Shut up, Nemu," Mayuri snarled as the screen showed the world spinning a hundred and eighty degrees as Uryu spun around.

"Orihime!?" the boy's voice shouted through the speakers as Mayuri noticed the familiar figure of Orihime Inoue on the screen, within reaching distance of the Hollow.

Mayuri tutted. "My, my, what is it with this girl? She's always around when the bacteria pick up on unusual readings..."

At that moment, the Hollow made a grab for Orihime and the monitor flashed as the bacteria picked up on Uryu's heart skipping a beat. The Hollow's huge, clawed hand smashed down on top of Orihime and bounced off, slamming into the concrete pavement, creating a small crater and kicking up a thick cloud of dust.

"_Orihime_!" Uryu shouted again, the bow noticeably flickering in his hand.

"Weak," Mayuri said flippantly, waving a hand in dismissal.

The Kurotsuchis remained glued to the monitor, which showed the Hollow turning in the dust cloud towards the Quincy, who raised his bow and fired a shimmering arrow of light into the heart of the cloud. The Hollow gave one final roar, pounding the ground with its enormous feet, and disappeared into the air.

The view on the screen immediately vanished as the boy ran into the cloud. "Orihime!" his voice called, and Mayuri watched as the bacteria showed extraordinarily elevated stress levels. The sound of the boy's footsteps continued playing through the speakers, his feet hitting the ground hard as he rushed to the spot in which Orihime had been standing.

After a couple of seconds, there was a blinding flash across the screen and every bacterium flickered off and back on again, a blip in every reading. When sound was restored, Mayuri heard the sound of Uryu groaning in pain and examined his data, deducing that the boy had run into something and fallen over backwards. Sure enough, the smoke cleared and revealed a the outline of a glowing orange triangle, Orihime Inoue standing safely behind it.

"Orihime?" Uryu asked, blinking.

"Do you think he knows any other words besides 'Orihime'?" Mayuri pondered, raising an eyebrow at Nemu.

"Oh, look, he's happy to see her," Nemu said quietly, indicating the bacteria showing that his mouth was turned up in a very slight smile.

"I prefer to think that he's grimacing in pain right now," Mayuri said nonchalantly.

"That's a possibility too," Nemu conceded in a monotone, staring at the screen.

"Either way, I'm bored of this," Mayuri said, watching as Uryu jumped up and flitted around the girl, checking for damage. "This guy needs to _relax_."

Mayuri grabbed a dial on his computer, turning it all the way down. The bacteria registered Uryu's eyes closing and his movements slowing, until his legs gave up altogether and he sank down onto the floor by Orihime's feet, curled up into a ball and fell asleep.

"Um."

Mayuri twiddled a dial to bring back vision, reconfiguring the bacteria on the boy's eyelids to provide a view. When the monitor flickered back to life, the Kurotsuchis saw a close-up of Orihime's confused face frowning at them and waving.

"Uryu? Hey, Uryu, are you okay?" she asked in concern

The Quincy gave an incoherent mumble and twitched his nose.

"I don't blame you, I'm tired, too. I guess that's what we get for Hollow-hunting in the middle of the night!"

"She's seriously talking to a sleeping person?" Mayuri asked incredulously.

Orihime sat down on the concrete by the sleeping Uryu. "Well, I don't think I can carry you back home, and it wouldn't be proper for me to wake Ichigo up for help, so I suppose I had better just stay with you until you wake up," she said, cheerfully. "I mean, what if a Hollow were to appear when you were sleeping and you didn't wake up in time? It might eat you, or kill you, or kidnap you and force you to put on a fish costume and dance around for their entertainment," she said.

Mayuri blinked. "Have I ever experimented on this girl before?"

"I don't think so, Master Mayuri," Nemu said. "Why do you ask?"

"That incessant babbling. It's a hallmark."

Orihime smiled slightly, looking directly out of the monitor. "Well, Uryu, you protected me earlier, so that means it's my turn to protect you. I'm sure Tsubaki would love an excuse to get out of my hairclip."

"Now she's definitely talking like one of my participants," Mayuri muttered.

Orihime gently took Uryu's glasses off his nose, in the process accidentally brushing her index finger against his temple. A few of the bacteria abandoned their old data and instead began displaying new figures, completely independent of Uryu's.

"Sir, it would appear as though Orihime Inoue has accidentally been infected by your bacteria," Nemu pointed out calmly.

Mayuri rubbed his hands together. "Excellent, another test-subject," he responded, shutting down the programme. "This has the potential to be rather an interesting experiment. All I need to do is to wait for the bacteria to spread, and then I can start observing the girl. Perhaps she'll prove to be more interesting than the predictable Quincy."

"Perhaps," Nemu said, vaguely.


	4. Chapter 4

"It has been precisely a week!" Mayuri announced to nobody in particular as he darted to his computer and booted it up. "The bacteria which were hijacked by Orihime Inoue have had more than enough time to successfully colonise the girl, so they should be up and running. Nemu, get over here!"

"Yes, Master Mayuri," the girl replied subserviently, leaving her own workstation. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"You can shut up, for starters," Mayuri retorted. "Look, the bacteria are just finishing calibrating. We should have data soon."

Mayuri entered a few numbers, and soon enough the screen flickered to life, split down the middle with two different sets of data on it.

"Okay, so we have the Quincy on the left and the girl on the right. Looks like they're in school right now."

Sure enough, glancing at the screen revealed an image of the two kids, the girl on the left-hand screen and the boy on the left, but both were clearly in a classroom full of people dressed similarly.

"They're talking to each other," Nemu said, placidly, as Mayuri glared at her.

"Do you think I can't tell that for myself, Nemu?" he demanded, turning up the volume.

"Yay! It's the first of June!" Orihime declared, her face lighting up on the boy's screen. "Do you know what that means, Uryu?"

"I'll need to buy some sunblock soon?" Uryu replied uncertainly.

Orihime giggled. "No, silly! Well, actually, that might be a good idea," she added, her gaze scrutinising Uryu's pale face, which promptly turned faintly pink. "The first of June is Free Hugs Day!"

Mayuri could practically see the temperature of Uryu's face rising in Orihime's screen without even looking at the numbers. However, before he could even register what the girl had said, the conversation had been interrupted by a red-headed female with glasses.

"Did I just hear my 'Hime say the words 'free hugs'?" she cried, leaping over three tables and seizing Orihime. Mayuri winced as the right-hand side of the monitor split in two, the bacteria multiplying and configuring themselves rapidly until the redhead had her own colony.

"No, _no, __**no, NO**_!" Mayuri screamed, frantically twiddling dials as the monitor showed half of Orihime's classmates lining up for a hug.

"Oh look, Ishida looks annoyed," Nemu pointed out vaguely, as Mayuri commenced with his freak-out.

"I know how he feels," Mayuri said, melodramatically. "I don't care, about him, though, I need to stop this girl from breaking my bacteria!"

"Breaking, Sir?" Nemu asked, as the screen showed an excitable boy with brown hair glomping Orihime, only to be prised away by a bored-looking boy with tufts of black hair as the screen split yet again.

"If the bacteria perform mitosis too much in too short a time, as triggered by finding a new host, they stop working effectively," Mayuri exclaimed with all the patience of a particularly harassed mother whose toddler is doodling on the wall in crayon after having spent the entirety of the night before bawling. "We need to stop this girl. I don't even care about keeping her as a guinea-pig, just so long as she doesn't break my bacteria. Those took too long to make, and I doubt I'll be able to reproduce them from the boy because he never touches anybody."

"Then how do you shut down the bacteria on the girl?" Nemu inquired.

"Easy. We get the boy to touch her."

"Of course," Nemu replied, not a trace of sarcasm in her voice.

Mayuri sighed in exasperation. "It's easy enough to understand. The newly-mitosised bacteria the girl is currently giving to everybody in Karakura are still programming themselves and can be shut down remotely if a charge is applied to the host's bacteria."

Nemu clasped her hands together. "What exactly does that mean, Master Mayuri?" she asked.

Mayuri turned back to the screen. "Watch and learn, Nemu," he said.

Orihime continued hugging her classmates, but Mayuri discarded her information for the moment. Instead, he turned to a dial to the left of his desk and Uryu began to shiver.

After another few minutes of the screen dividing into small and smaller sections, Orihime finally turned to the shivering Quincy. "Hey, Uryu, it's your turn for a hug!"

Uryu's temperature increased very slightly, so in response Mayuri turned the dial back down. "Oh, no thank you, Orihime," he said, his teeth chattering almost imperceptibly. "I'm good."

"You look cold," Orihime pointed out. Uryu furiously shook his head, unable to form the words to convince her otherwise. "Here, maybe this will warm you up a bit!"

Orihime stretched out her arms and carefully placed them around Uryu's slightly shivering form. However, at the moment of contact, Mayuri hit the kill switch and a painful spark of electricity shot from Uryu to Orihime.

"Ouch!" he yelped, shooting backwards, away from Orihime, who looked puzzled. However, before she could say anything, a woman who looked to be in her thirties entered the classroom and glanced in the direction of Uryu's yelp in a bored fashion.

"Miss Inoue, if you're going to try to kill Ishida, please could you be quick enough about it to ensure that that noise never comes out of his mouth again? My ears hurt," she said, holding a hand up to her head. Orihime's eyes widened as she hastily apologised.

"I'm so sorry, Uryu, I must have built up a static charge on the carpet or something!" she exclaimed, as the woman who was evidently a teacher drew some squiggles on the board and sat down to read a book, ignoring the class.

"Aaaand there we have it," Mayuri declared, closing all of the blank windows, leaving the sole window with a display left, Uryu's, up on the screen and muting the speakers. "That, Nemu, is how you go about exterminating all non-essential life-forms as quickly and efficiently as possible. Any questions?"

"No, Sir," Nemu said to the floor, as Mayuri seized her plait and dragged her face up to his eye-level.

"Liar. You wanted to ask about the Quincy's culture of bacteria."

"Whatever Master Mayuri says," Nemu responded calmly, still standing on tip-toes.

Mayuri shrugged, releasing her hair. "Well, I'll tell you. The first host's culture is fine! Granted, a culture planted on Ichigo Kurosaki would have been nice, but considering the fact that the quality of his bacteria would have been low if it had come from the idiot girl's hugging spree, following his leaky and out-of-control reiatsu is definitely the way to go," he said, almost wistfully.

"Yes, Sir," Nemu said in placating tones, as Mayuri closed the window on the monitor and spun around in his chair, giggling.

* * *

**Author's notes: This "one-shot" appears to be developing a plot. How peculiar. Funnily enough, Guest, it was the strong potential for Chekhov's Boomerang in canon that inspired me to write the first chapter in the first place. Yeah, I think this is going to eventually turn into a Chekhov's Boomerang fic. I mean, obviously, it will once I'm bored with torturing Uryu. Yay, I know where this is going! :D**

**Reviewers, favouriters, subscribers and all readers - your time and input is very much appreciated. Thank you. As gratitude, have an imaginary cookie. Or five. Also, I promise to give you a warning before this fic eventually dives into proper spoiler-territory. Which it won't, for a while, because when it does I can't torture Uryu any more.**

**Random note: I appear to have accidentally derailed Mayuri into a psychopathic manchild. Oh well, I think the role kind of suits him. :)**


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